Since I found I had prostate cancer in 2018, Nessie has taken over a lot of my day to day tasks. One of these was looking after the bilge pumps and their attendant batteries in our leakier vessels. These each have a float switch so that the pump switches on when the water reaches a certain level. For most of my adult life bilge pumps have been a major preoccupation. Almost every holiday has been marred by returning to a sunken boat as most people don't seem to be able to understand the simple physics of leaks, batteries, float switches and pumps.
Nessie has been improving things by installing lots of solar panels to keep the batteries charged. This saves a lot of lugging about of batteries. The latest panels are on the foredeck of "Elton".
Since the photo was taken he's angled them more to catch the midday sun, particularly important in winter.
it's nearly a fortnight now since we had a clearout of "Elton"s hold. It got to be a mess as it was used as a 'deal with that later' place for metal collected on recycling trips. It built up while we were busy restoring "Hazel", after which the society went into a decline that we're now recovering from.
Anyway, this is the second session of clearing, and we actually found the bottom of the boat. Daniel Stocks and Liz Stanford worked in the hold while I was on the bank identifying different metals and bagging them up.
The metal was weighed in and netted the charity nearly £70.
